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Nagin attorney meets with prosecutors in closed-door meeting

Ray Nagin arraignment

Ray Nagin, former Mayor of New Orleans, walks into the Federal Courthouse on Poydras Street in New Orleans to be arraigned on federal corruption charges Wednesday, February 20, 2013. (Photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com |The Times-Picayune)

Prosecutors met with former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's defense attorney behind closed doors Thursday morning in a pretrial conference with the federal judge presiding over the corruption case. After the 45-minute session, the attorneys emerged but provided no specifics about their discussions.

Robert Jenkins, Nagin's defense attorney, said only that U.S. District Judge Helen "Ginger" Berrigan is still considering his bid to dismiss dismiss Nagin's indictment on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct and his alternative request to delay the trial date. Nagin's trial is set to begin Oct. 28.

A grand jury in January indicted Nagin on 21 counts, including corruption, bribery and fraud charges.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Coman and Richard Pickens left the courthouse without commenting, along with Matthew Chester, whose name appeared on the docket for the first time Thursday.

As the trial date nears, Jenkins has tried to leverage a ruling in a separate case granting a new trial for five officers convicted in the Danziger Bridge shootings after Hurricane Katrina and subsequent cover-up. The judge in that case tossed the convictions because of "grotesque" prosecutorial misconduct within the New Orleans U.S. attorney's office and elsewhere in the Justice Department. The misconduct cited includes instances of high-ranking prosecutors authoring inflammatory comments on NOLA.com about open federal investigations. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Sal Perricone and former First Assistant Jan Mann -- both authors of derogatory comments about subjects of federal probes -- resigned amidst the online commenting scandal, as did their boss, former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten.